Monday, October 31, 2016

Being Horrible

I don't get anything from being horrible. I get my solitude. I get my cup of black coffee. No one to make my bed for, no one to cook or clean. Over the years the windows get dirtier and dirtier, a false fading sun, setting down slowly on me. It's dark, I'm angry, and the voices outside won't stop.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Procrastinator

I took my time and look what it got me. A stack of papers and a line of creditors lurking round my door. I got so many orders barked at me you'd think I'd be in better shape, know how to take that rifle apart piece by piece in seconds. But instead I walk to the corner store, trying my luck on another weekday night, wondering about Wonderbread. Every dime and nickel that goes toward my salvation is another nickel and dime. Preemption, that's the golden ticket, and all my dough's in poker change.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Brute

And what I'd really like to do is answer the phone, tell him he's not wanted, tell him to go to hell and to fuck off while doing it. That if he really cared he would, I don't know, show it. And I'd like to reach through and break his face and strangle him with the cord, if there is one, and if there isn't I'd find something else. Because sometimes brutes only respond to brutish things, so if that's what it takes then that's what it takes. I'd look good in an orange jumpsuit.

But I don't do these things, and I don't say these words. I pass versions of them onto you, I claim I'm no psychiatrist. You know what's best for you and I can only choose support, it ain't my life and it ain't my love. But what I know of it is, well, I know enough. That a man can say a lot of empty letters in a lot of pleasing ways, and it's a whole lotta nothing until he starts acting them out.

Friday, October 28, 2016

My Noise

It's late. I pretend it's early, say that it's on time. I wonder if anybody notices, if anyone cares. If I call it what it should be instead of what it is, isn't that enough? If a tree falls, that sort of thing. I don't know if anyone is around to hear my noise. I chop trees how I want.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Hurts So Good

She ran her fingers over the small of my back and I contorted, twisted up in too much pleasure. Did that hurt, she asked, and, yes, I said, but only because it felt so good. And so from then on she avoided that spot, even when I asked her not to. But still she stayed away, even though, sometimes, the pleasure that comes from pain and the pain that comes from pleasure can be the best of what they are.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Into the Fog

Maybe not today or tomorrow and maybe not even soon. Maybe not even someday, maybe it won't ever happen, maybe all that happens is you watch the plane fly away. You walk into the fog, away from the corpse, straight into yourself and it's all you can do. Knowing one man is impossible enough, you can't expect to know many. So maybe regret never happens, maybe you're too busy fighting the good fight. Maybe the pang is always deep inside, maybe nothing ever really goes away. And one day you wake up, still in fog, rotten flesh in your nostrils, and you ask yourself how you got there. And it's all because you made her fly away.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

I, Unclean

"Someone stop this madness!" I shouted on the steps of my front porch, well past the hours of dressing, in my old bathrobe and slippers while the autumn breeze turned to foul wind and set my skin on ice. No one stopped at me, no one looked, no trees bent, no one came to my aid in any way. It was cold and I, unclean, I walked back in disheveled, disappointed, that madness should continue to reign with nothing done by nobody to stop it.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Source of Warmth

Capping off a cold day here downtown, every street a wind tunnel, every coffee shop window a welcome oasis. I'm heading over home for a quick stop-off before meeting Sal for our weekly shoot-the-shit.

It's a quiet one, too, today, I don't see many people, don't hear many things. I blink just a little longer than usual, sends my body chills when those lids meet up and my eyes turns to ice. But nothing a little barley, water, rye, and wheat can't handle.

Age me in a bourbon barrel, just to see what happens. I'd like to see that, taste the difference, wonder what the cherrywood what-have-you seeps into my skin. Will I darken, sweeten, will I be bold and bitter, even more than now I am already. Will I have nose and legs and anything else that makes me human. Will I go down smooth. Will you want me at all.

A chill! I've been gabbing too long, I never gab short. Sal will wonder where I am. He'll be there on his stool, checking his watch, thinking to himself, thinking about whatever he thinks about when he's alone. I wonder if he thinks about what I think about when I'm alone, if it's him or work or weather or what. Although I guess the point of being friends is we don't have to think about each other.

No one's out today. Everybody's home. Everybody's got the same idea. Everybody's looking for a little source of warmth, a good swaddling, growing in so tomorrow they can reach out grabbing, doubled might and clear vision. Cold gets to people, and it gets them freezing, but in the end it gets them warm, you stick it out and know what to do.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Is This Okay

I said is this okay and she said yes but I couldn't tell. Situation like that words don't always mean what they mean. I said are you sure and she said yes but then she says wait. Is this okay. She says is this okay and I say I think so and her eyes go wide so I say yes. And I say yes, not so. I think it is and thinking's all you can do, situation like this.

Stop checking in, she says, stop asking questions stop asking. She pushes me away and says why are you so nice. I'm not and that's the thing and I tell her. And it's quiet. And I want to ask what she means but questions are chinks in the chain and I'm weak enough already on my side all by my own. I give a rough look, dark and dreamy like I've seen on magazines and I stop with questions and I stop with hesitation and I decide that this is okay. I become what I think I have to be. And it turns out that for right now I'm right.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

A Champion

When you win you forget when you lost. When you lose you'll never win. You'll only lose forever and ever. It doesn't matter how well you do or how good you are, it will never be enough. You will have to win so much more than you lose, you will have to be a champion. A champion for all time, for the ages, for little boys and girls in school. You will never be one for yourself, important though it is. You'll will never be enough, even though you are.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Placeholder

I wait for inspiration and refuse to put on heat. Remember my tea, it's cooled off too much but it'll have to do. It's hard sometimes, soothing myself into an early state of sleep. The body kicks in and confuses, not Christmas Eve, but an anticipation for something that isn't even there.

I stare at my clothes and know I need a purge. I need to clean out everything: my closet, my desk, my mind. Papers and old shirts, dramatic ideas and half-songs sung with words I can't let go. If you repeat the placeholder enough it sets itself in stone.

I wait for the call I know is coming. Answers I'll have to provide, later rather than sooner and that was my mistake. I am figuring out a lot of things I should have figured out a long time ago. I only hope that never changes, and most of me thinks that it never does.

I stare at John, Paul, George, and Ringo. A perfect storm, a cosmic aligning. I shake my internal fist at my aligned cosmos, I wish to damn hell they had ru it by me first. I am trying to follow the signs. I am worried that I will split myself in opposite directions and each path leads to my undoing.

I wait for it, the tea to kick in, I rub my feet together. Slowly warmth is coming, slowly my knees keep aching, slowly I'm forgetting. People come in and out in an instant. I am holding open doors and windows, trying to let the light in, only trying to say hello.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Atrophy

Stranded in bed, the inevitability of brunch before us. Where shall we go, she says. Savory and sweet and extra coffee, a paralyzingly choice of insides and toppings. I say I'm not hungry but my stomach betrays me. She smiles at the rumbling. I'll say that, she smiles when I rumble.

My knees hurt, more than usual. Is this what happens when you're sedentary? Am I already beginning to atrophy? I am in danger of not using the best parts of myself, the ones you'll never see. A meal is not so long.

We eat and I pay. She grabs some mints and stuffs them in my pocket. The sun hits her hair through the window just right. Black never looked so bright.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

A Name I Never Shared

She'd make tea and we'd fall asleep to jazz and dream about being better. I had a name for her I never shared and I hoped she had the same, a name for me, something she called me when it was only her around. There wasn't a bet I lost or an argument I ventured where I wasn't happy she was there. Still, you can always be better.

Nights were long, she went away just like the song and I started talking to myself. It would be okay, it would be fine, things would get back to normal. I was having a hard time grasping normal, any version of it. When things are lost you replace them, sometimes you have to replace them with whatever's around. Over time it might erode into a resemblance, but it's never quite the same.

Communication is the key. I said I would never stop talking when she got back. Listening and sharing and all the things in hindsight. Back we'd go to sun-dipped mornings, our creature comforts, newspaper smudges and the future. She would talk about the future all day and I would listen.

Dreaming ceased. They say you dream every night, you just don't remember. I was forgetting dreams before they started, faces and voices were slipping. My subconscious was telling me something, shaking its head, filling in the gaps with larger gaps. Do you have any idea the sound of nothing filling nothing? It's a word I can't describe. I can feel it, I always will, but I'll never know what it's called.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Burying Bullets

You get nothing from burying bullets. You have to bury the gun. Heap as much dirt as you want over the holes in your heart, it'll fall right through, like a pit to China. Bury one and unearth another. Get dirty, get clean, get forgiven, start forgiving. It is easy and impossible and it is the only way.

Monday, October 17, 2016

Intertwined

When you say friend, say they instead of she, when the answer is last night but you say you don't remember when, you think you are doing something wrong. You can't be everything to everyone so you've settled on being yourself to yourself. Stories get muddled, facts intertwine, this whole thing is quite exhausting. People do it every day, for years, they have whole families. You are not as rotten as you think you are.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Zero to One

There is a distance between zero and one unlike any other I've known. A chasm crossed, far and wide, by nothing other than shear madness. It was true, whatever it was, that drew the two of them together, and truer still what drove them apart. It is the addition of one, and in each one there is infinity.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Thoughts on Lucifer and His Mom

"He has a mom? Do fallen angels have moms? Is his mom God? How could his mom escape hell? Why would she need to? Is Lucifer really so mad at his mom that he wants to keep her in hell while he goes gallivanting on earth with an English accent? She probably just wants to have a little fun like him, check up on him, spend a little time with her beautiful little boy in a place that isn't, you know, hell. Although if that's where they're from then you'd think they might like it. But also Lucifer was cast out of heaven, so that's where he's really from. But when you move you get used to it eventually. Still. Lucifer's got a mom? Does no one else find this weird?"

Friday, October 14, 2016

Discipline

I meant to do work, she told me, I meant to sit down and get things done. But those things lead to other things and one thing leads to another and after a while you lose your way, you know?

I had two choices: tell her the truth or tell her some lie.

I know, I said. It can be hard to concentrate, get things done, discipline yourself. She nodded, she was glad I understood. Discipline yourself, I repeated. She nodded. Again I said, discipline yourself. Discipline, discipline, I said it over and over, to her and at and myself included. And after a while, one thing led to another, and it lost its meaning like all words do.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Diver

I am a diver who almost died diving, diving for depths other divers kept striving toward. Ocean floors hidden and darker and deeper than any death other than that we harken for. We need the blackness, the wild wet unknown; the cheap seats, the galley, the gallery, thrones, they don't interest us. They are just there to distract, confuse us and keep us from getting in tact to the highest goal. Which, irony, is the lowest place, controlling our brains that are brined from our race to the finish. The swimming, the dim fish, the spinning, the holding your breath, the diving, the winning.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Alive One

Lower to me on my side, lower than you on yours. Yours is a one I've seen most often, mine is a thing of beauty though. Mine is rare and unforgivable. You cry like the lightning, curse like a schoolmarm. I'm in one fender bender after another and never is it ever enough. Change, Jack, I'm bringing change about me. I've got cold hard cash meaning to make something of something in the world. Not this world but the world, the next one, whatever we make it. I've been told I'm a real live one, more alive than most. I don't care, I keep it low, I keep it down so's not to arouse suspicion. I like 'em to not see me comin', I'd like to be a real surprise, you know that, Jack? I don't want to be the king. What's even more than that? I'll be him eventually. You scream up a storm, you do, a right nuisance, you take the breaks like they broke you last week. Doesn't even matter I suppose. We all get what's comin' to us anyhow, in the end. Only difference is, Jack, some people make what's comin', and the others, well, they just get what's made.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Replied

It's never the right time to reply. Overthinking has become my pastime, I am an expert, analyzing to the point of paralysis. One day you will say something and I will respond immediately, the truth or not, but it will happen right away. It doesn't matter, I have found, what it is you say, but that you say something. That you build, and work, and move forward. Brick and mortar, brick and mortar, I'm not making the Sistine Chapel here. But maybe if I start talking then we can.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Hiccup

After a day of napping between vomits I have found myself with the hiccups. Perhaps I was overzealous when I could finally keep down water and dry toast, gulping and chewing and sucking in air. As if my abdominals needed more of a workout. I'll have a six-pack come morning. So I hold my breath and drink a glass of water and hold my breath again. Still I stifle these bursts.

And then suddenly they stop. Gone. My breathing and my body return to, well, not normal. But I am unencumbered. My stomach hurts, my knees have bruises from my bathroom floor. I take things in too quickly. And then I pay the price, however small or short.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Savior

You want a savior. You want answers to questions you've had for years. You want a tall drink of water and I've got the hose. I've got books and words to set you right. Put you at ease. All it takes is devotion, all I'd need is your time and life. I've been around the people and I'd call that an even trade.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

One Man Clapping

I shake your hand and say good job. You smile, sweaty, hoarse, say thank you. Did I enjoy the show, you ask me. I pretend someone's caught my eye. Did I enjoy the show? I say it was great work, I called you stellar. You seemed to be happy.

I think you saw me during curtain call. Everyone stood, ovating. People are moved too easily these days. And I stayed seated, you looked my way after the bow as the lights went down. Did you see me clapping politely? My convincing smile? My crossed legs?

A pause and I say I have to go. You've got other people to see, admirers, good and decent people. I say good job again. You seem a little less happy. We hug. It is all very polite. We are friends, after all.

Friday, October 7, 2016

Lump

Lump in my throat. Slept with the window open. I don't want to be closed off. Nothing under the sheets but me. Don't want to be closed off but don't want to go out. This is what they call a conundrum.

It's the changing kf seasons. Your body never understands. Twenty degrees disappears and lumps show up. My face dries out. I can never get the equation right. I've been packing on my winter layer since May. There's no time like the past.

Eventually it will warm up. Eventually I'll be too warm. I'll have to go out. Nothing between the world and me. They'll see me and all my lumps, my dryness, they'll know I can never get it right. The future comes and goes. My room stays the same.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Old Oil

Today I watched a strange woman with bad teeth make hamburgers. She made them for hours, for strangers, each one the same as before. She must go home at night and smell like beef grease, wake up smelling like it, go to work and smell like it some more. I wonder how many shirts she's ruined, how many tiny burns she has on her hands from flecks of spattered grease.

I ordered mine, medium rare, it came back well done but there was nothing to say. I ate it and enjoyed it mostly. Everyone in there was. And as we left we probably smelled like meat and old oil, too. But I can shower, I never have to go back again. Although we all have our diners, one way or another.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

The Gravity Within Me

Cold and not exactly scared but something of that family. I'm on the bed and remember everything up until the car. I try to move my legs and I can but something inside is weighing me down. There is extra gravity within me. I can only breathe through my mouth.

He's over there in the chair on the phone. The TV's on but muted, still I can't hear him. I make out certain words through my eyelashes: yes, over, delicious. Laughing a little and listening a lot. There's a drink in his hand. My breath smells like grain alcohol.

Ends his call, looks at me, something like a smile. I give him something like a smile back, I try to raise my eyebrows. He walks away. He takes a shower.

I am in pain, something so much more than physical. My body doesn't hurt, my heart and soul are bonded, soaked in dread. In moments I will go to sleep with this man right beside me. He will place his hand on mine and whisper words of love. And he'll fall asleep and wake up rested.

The water off. I move to my side. I look out the window, and all I see is a window. He gets in bed behind me, puts his arm across, his hand on mine. He says those things to me. And I say them back, being tired, and hoping for sleep.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

One of Those Parties

There was loud music playing and a lot of people in crazy getups. Everything was pretty much terrible by my account. The worse the music the louder it must play, the louder the clothing the more it must be worn. There is a strange correlation between these things, I've found, and that night was no different.

There was one of those pools and all of those people jumping in it like in the movies. Only no Los Angeles in the background, no city lights to look out onto. Trees and brisk breeze and a neighbor's fence. A small trampoline and kickboards, there were platters of pizza bagels and pizza rolls and half-eaten bags of chips and popcorn and it was a right mess everywhere. Cups of beer and cans of beer and bottles of beer to boot, liquor flowed and flew and so did thoughts and cares and worries.

There was light, too much light, most of the lights were on and it left quite little to the imagination. There was a dog everyone could hear but no one could find. And the more I circulated, the more people that ran into me, the more I realized no one knew whose house this was. The owner, if he or she was there, was keeping him or herself silent, if he or she existed at all. And all at once I was in sophomore year, worried that the cops would give us all minors.

I retreated to a bedroom up the stairs and down the hall. Aside from one mattress on the floor with one tousled off-white sheet, there was no evidence that anyone used it for a room of any sort. No dressers, pictures, hangers, clothes, no anything that said a person was here or might come here again, save this lonely sheet. I stretched down on the mattress against my better judgment, and I will admit it was quite soft. The sheet, too, seemed soft but yet not worn. And as I kicked off my shoes and drew it over me I thought to myself, Why not just go home?

Monday, October 3, 2016

Why What Wheatgrass

Man, let me just tell you this, I am loving listening to everybody talk about their engagements and babies and all their little weddings. I love these rings, I love diamonds, anything shiny, the bigger the better, the merrier the more. I love the intersections of anger and pain, the avenues of yoga pants and red wine. I want to hear about your dogs, I want the details of your excursions, I want the selfies of you in front of priceless monuments and ancient culture. Tell me where to cleanse, instruct me how to salad, who for the best bicycle and why what wheatgrass. You are leveled up! You are strong and self-sufficient, needing nothing but the constant wireless support of everyone you hold dear and countless other avatars! Man, I envy you. I want your thread count, your co-op, your disposable income and your forced dancing.

I want to say something nice about someone every day for a year. But I don't just want to say it to myself. I don't even want to say it to the other person. Oh, sure, I could make a call or send a letter, write a message, shoot a text. I could invite someone over or ask them out for lattes. But, man, seems the way to go is to tag them in a post letting everyone know that I'm saying something nice, how many other nice things I've said, and say some other nice thing. That way my niceness will reach more people, far more than the post is actually about. (Side note: The post is about me!) Why do something nice for someone if they're the only one who knows you did it?

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Sonny

I jolted up, or sideways rather, curled into a fetus on the dirty bathroom floor. The toilet seat was up, the remnants of a half-digested peanut butter sandwich buckshot blasted there inside. A voice outside the door kept calling "Sonny? Sonny? You all right in there?" I spat and flushed and spat again, and with such herculean effort as I've never had I managed "Yeah."

Which makes me either very stupid or very dishonest, for no man in my state would answer "yes" to "are you fine." I'd moved back in with Cousin Reg, fallen on hard times and harder drink, and what little dough I had I spent on ego. But he could see me through those doors, or else he might as well have. And Cousin Reg is older than me but his hearing's fine. He knew what scene had unfolded.

By the grace of God I stood and held myself up at the sink. What was this thing before me in the mirror? A man, supposedly, it had the marks of one; the eyes, the ears, the thinning hair. I was in a room made from my poor decisions, walls and roof built by my apathy. I could have taken charge and saved and acted better and asked questions and read and listened and thought and prayed and done a little bit more every day until every day I did so much, so much I'd hardly take it, a life filled with nothing but doing and being and understanding. And now I bunked with Cousin Reg, and there were beard trimmings in the sink and mold in the shower.

"Sonny?" he said again, and this time went to come on in, the doorknob rattling from my good sense to lock it. Though if I'd died in there—which, let's be honest just this once, might very well have happened—they would have had to break the door down, axe it up and see me through the wreckage like so many crumpled towels. Is that how I wanted to die? Is that how I wanted to live? "Sonny?" Reg asked me again. "You sure that you're all right?" And for what's left of what I call a life I'd no idea the answer.

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Hung Up

Two, three, four o'clock goes by and I'm not surprised. I knew it was her birthday weekend, or found out after I'd asked her. She was enthusiastic, used exclamation points. She said we'd play the time by ear. I'd gotten this before but still pressed on. And when the time for coffee fades I can only chuckle, and mostly at myself.

It's not a difficult thing: "It's my birthday." It's not that complicated: "Maybe another time." And because of these easy answers I am forced into the only possible truth, which is that this is a signal, a message, as all the others were. They come into view, side by side, and each one magnifies the other. The facts were there, but I was hellbent on bending them.

I pine. I get hung up, it's true. But more than that I'd like the truth. The ones in my head, the ones I make up, are worse even if they are better. And, by definition, anything I make up cannot be true. If you think you're hurting me, trust me, you're helping. Also, I could wise up, stop acting silly, leave you alone. There's that, too.